Ornamental fabric



July 29, 1969 BOOK ET AL ORNAMENTAL FABRIC 2 Sheets-Sheet 1 Filed Feb. 7, 1968 3 INVENTORS B ERA 1x053 0 0/1 BYJOHNESQASB um; L

8. S. BOOK ET ORNAMENTAL FABRIC Jgly 29, 1969 Filed Feb. 7, 1968 2 Sheets-Sheet 2 United States Patent 3,457,733 ORNAMENTAL FABRlC Bernard S. Book, Huntington, N.Y., and John E. Salsburg, Rocky Mount, N.C., assignors to Burlington Industries, Inc., Greensboro, N.C., a corporation of Delaware Filed Feb. 7, 1968, Ser. No. 703,593 Int. Cl. C0411 23/08, 23/10 US. Cl. 66192 6 Claims ABSTRACT OF THE DISCLOSURE An ornamental fabric having a base material on which nubs of fibers are secured to one side thereof by interlocking warp knit stitches of yarn that knits through said base fabric.

The present invention relates to a fabric, more particularly a fabric having an ornamental design composed of nubs and to a method of making it.

The term nubs, as used herein, refers to small masses or balls of fibers. These materials, usually made on the card, were previously considered a waste product. It now is known to dye them or use them in the undyed state and intersperse them in yarn to give it brightness, eg. Knickerbocker, bug and slub yarns. In accordance with the invention, the nubs are deposited on a fabric base in a predeterrnined pattern and are sewn to the fabric, the sewing forming chains of loops along one side of the fabric base, the sewing threads connecting between loops extending through the loops and through and along the other side of the fabric base.

The sewing operation used is similar to warp knitting. However, for purposes of simplicity, the term sewing will be used. This term has found use in the textile industry in connection with fabrics stitched in a warp knitting machine, and it avoids confusion because the word warp is used to refer to another yarn sometimes incorporated in this type of fabric, as will be explained below. Similarly, for convenience, the term sewing thread will be used for the threads which form these loops.

Fabrics of the type having generally parallel chains of loops along a fabric base are known and can be made by forming a plurality of chain stitched rows of loops of sewing thread along the fabric base which is an array of loose fibers, loose filling yarn or woven fabrics, plastic sheets and the like. The present invention is especially useful when the fabric base is composed of a fabric, e.g. woven,

or a batting. The stitches pass through the material at spaced points along the machine direction of the fabric and, in the case of a loose filling yarn base, gather the filling yarn, and to a certain extent the loose fibers, into a plurality of clusters separated by spaces corresponding to the stitch insertion points. When the fabric base comprises a fluffy batting, on one side, i.e. the side carrying loops, the chains of loops sink into the batting with intermediate fibers left fluffy to provide a ribbed effect similar to corduroy. On the other side, the fibers between sewing thread also are fluffed somewhat. When a preferred form of stitching-the interlocking or tricot stitch described belowis used, the fibers tend to be gathered into small tufts, and the stitch insertion points are quite visible. The appearance is of a grid of perforations with intermediate tufts.

The interlocking or tricot stitch is obtained by the manner in which the sewing thread is supplied to loop forming needles. The thread passes through guides which oscillate between adjacent needles. Each sewing thread end is alternately supplied to adjacent sewing needles, and each chain of loops contains loops alternately formed from two different threads. This type of stitch has several advantages. First, the interknitting of the two sewing ends increases the 3,457,738 Patented July 29, 1969 durability of the fabric. If simple chain stitching is used, one break in a sewing thread may result in an entire chain of loops being pulled out. In the interlocking stitch described above, each sewing thread is interlocked with two others; therefore, a broken thread will be held by two others. Another advantage of this type of stitch is that it facilitates the use of warp yarns. It is known that dimensional stability of the fabric can be improved by laying warp yarns against one side of the filling material and fastening them down with sewing thread. In the interlocking stitch, zigsagging of sewing thread between adjacent chains of loops provides a convenient means for holding the warp yarn in place. The warp yarn is simply laid against the fabric before the sewing thread is moved over it by the sewing thread guide.

In accordance with the present invention, nubs or a nubby yarn is deposited on one side of the fabric base prior to sewing and the deposited material is stitched against the fabric base, preferably on the side where sewing thread connects between loops. The nubs may be of a different color from the fabric base. The nubs may also be undyed or natural and the base fabric may also be undyed color being added by piecedyeing after fabric is formed. However, even if they are the same color, they can produce interesting patterns similar to brocade, damask, etc.

Various types of material can be formed into a fabric by sewing in accordance with the present invention. One form of material is described in US. Patent 2,890,579, which also describes the sewing operation. A plurality of loose filling yarns are provided from continuous yarns which are wound back and forth across a kind of tenter frame by a carriage, and around heddle books on moving conveyor belts at either side of the frame. The conveyors are moving while the carriage traverses the space between them, so that the filling threads are more or less oblique to the machine direction and. in two sets which are oblique to each other. That is after a set of parallel threads are caught on the hooks of one of the conveyors, the carriage moves directly across to the other conveyor. While the carriage moves across, the conveyors are moving perpendicularly to the carriage and, by the time the carriage reaches the other conveyor, that other conveyor has moved a short distance. Therefore the heddle books on which the threads are caught on the second conveyor are not directly opposite the hooks used on the first conveyor, and the threads are oblique to the machine direction. When the carriage returns to the first conveyor, an opposite effect is observed, and the threads laid down are oblique to the machine direction and to the threads laid down in the previous traverse. The filling threads mentioned above are cast off the heddle hooks after they are caught up by loops of sewing threads which gather them into clusters, separated by spaces where the sewing thread passes through the fabric.

However, it is preferred to use, as the filling material, a batting or nonwoven fiber web. This is a web of loosely arrayed fibers of any of the types previously mentioned, extending more or less randomly in various directions. Webs of this type may be formed by depositing atmospherically suspended fibers onto a moving screen, for example by suction applied through the screen. Webs also can be produced by carding a picker lap, and thickness can be increased by cross-laying a web in known manner. The fabric may be needle punched or bonded with latent solvents or resins, in known manner, although a fluffy unbonded web provides the most interesting ornamental effects.

The fabric base also may be a woven fabric, a plastic film or other sheet-like, sewable material.

Substantially any textile fibers can be used for or in the fabric base, nubby material and/or the sewing thread. These include natural fibers such as cotton, wool, sisal, linen, jute and silk, man-made fibers and filaments such as regenerated cellulose rayon, polynosic rayon, cellulose esters, e.g. cellulose acetate, cellulose acetate/butyrate and cellulose triacetate and synthetic fibers and filaments such as acrylics, e.g. polyacrylonitrile, modacrylics such as acrylonitrile-vinyl chloride copolymers, polyamides, e. g. polyhexamethylene adipamide (nylon 66), polycaproamide (nylon 6) and polyundecanoamide (nylon 11), polyolefin, e.g. polyethylene and polypropylene, polyester, e.g. polyethylene terephthaiate, rubber and synthetic rubber, saran, glass, and the like.

It is not necessary that the web and nubs be of the same kind of fibers. In fact one particularly useful process for making the new products depends on them being different. Thus, if undyed nubs and webs are used, made of different fibers, contrasting colors may be obtained by cross dyeing effects. Many dyestuffs have different effects on different fibers, dyeing some and not affecting others or producing different shades in different fibers. Information on these effects is readily available and permits the formulation of suitable dyebaths. For example, polyester, various type of nylon, rayon, acrylic and natural fibers have different dye affinities. By appropriate selection of dyes and fibers very interesting color combinations can be obtained.

Sewing yarn sizes ordinarily are to 1100 denier.-

When filling yarns are used, they may be 15 to 3300 denier. When warp yarns are used, they may be, e.g. 15 to 6600 denier. In the case of battings, fibers may be 1.0 to denier and /2" to 8 inches long. Normally, stitches will be 0.4 to 4 mm. apart along the warp and about 1.13 to 3.57 mm. apart across the fabric. Typically, the sewn fabric weighs 2 to ounces per square yard. The nubs may be of any size conventionally available.

The nubs are sewed to the side of the fabric base referred to above as the other side, that is the side along which sewing thread connects between loops. The nubs are resting on the fabric base as it approaches the sewing needles. As the loops are formed, on one side of the fabric base, the thread, after passing through the base, is pulled down against the other side, securing the nubs against the base. Since the nubs are a fluffy material, the thread sinks into them and is somewhat concealed. As the fabric is used, the nubs may actually cover over the sewing thread to a certain extent. The effect is that, even though the sewing thread is not dyed to match the nubs, it is quite inconspicuous.

There are many useful ways of depositing the nubs in a prearranged pattern. For example, the nubs may be stored in a hopper which drops the nubs through a stencil having openings corresponding to the pattern. This is similar to the use of a stencil in silk screen printing. If two or more color nubs are to be used in a design, the process would be repeated once for each color. Nubs may also be distributed in a totally random manner resulting in an overall textured effect.

The invention is illustrated in the drawing in which:

FIGURE 1 is a front view of a fabric according to the invention;

FIGURE 2 is a side view, partly in section, of a portion of the warp knitting apparatus used in producing the invention;

FIGURE 3 is a side view, similar to FIGURE 2, showing another stage of operation;

FIGURE 4 is a plan view, partly schematic, of the apparatus of FIGURES 2 and 3.

As seen in FIG. 1, the sewing thread in the fabric is formed into interlocked chain stitching substantially along the warp or machine direction. Each sewing thread 1 is formed into a plurality of loops 2 spaced along the length of the fabric base 3 which in the embodiment shown is a batting, each loop passing through the fabric. The

4 loops are formed into parallel chains, but each chain is formed from two threads which alternately are formed into stitches of adjacent chains. For example, one chain of loops, designated 4 in the drawing, is formed from two threads 5 and 6. A first loop 7 is formed from thread 5, the next loop 8 is formed from thread 6 and the next loop 9 is formed again from thread 5, etc. Thread 5 also is formed into loops 1% in the chain 11 on one side of chain 4, alongside loop 8 and other loops in chain 4 which are formed from thread 6. Similarly, thread 6 also is formed into loops 12 in a chain 13 on the other side of chain 4, alongside loops 7 and 9 in chain 4. The arrangement is such that each sewing thread is interlocked with two others in adjacent stitch lines so that, if a thread breaks, it will not pull out a succession of stitches as it would if each chain were formed from a single thread.

' On the opposite side of the fabric from the loops, the threads 5 and 6 zig-zag between the chains 4, 11 and 13, securing the nubs 14 against the fabric.

The formation of this chain stitching is illustrated in FIGS. 2 and 3. A needle 20 is provided which has a point 21 at one end and a hook 22 adjacent the end. There is a groove 23- in the upper surface of the needle in which slides part of a bent wire latch 24. The needle is mounted for horizontal reciprocating motion.

A fabric base 25 carrying nubs 14 moves downwardly across the path of the needte, and as the needle reciprocates it alternately pierces and is withdrawn from the web, the web being advanced downwardly while the needle is withdrawn.

A thread guide 26 is provided to insert the sewing thread 27 into the hook 22 when the needle extends through the web. As can be seen by comparing FIGS. 2

and 3, the thread guide moves up alongside the needle, across it and down on the opposite side, laying the thread in the hook 22 as it moves across. Then the needle is retracted and the latch 24 moves across the hook. At the same time, the web 25 moves down past the needle. As the needle moves forward to receive sewing thread again, the thread previously placed in the hook slides back onto the shank of the needle as seen at 28 to form a loop 29. When the needle retracts again and the latch 24 closes, the loop 29 slides forward toward the tip of the needle, pushed if necessary by the upright portion of latch 24. Since the hook 22 is closed by the latch, the loop 29 slides over the hook and is cast off the point 21 of the needle. At the same time, the thread in the hook is pulled through loop 29.

The thread guide 26 is mounted to alternately move up and across two needles. Therefore, it describes a figure eight path.

The nubs 14 are deposited on the fabric base as it is fed from a stock roll 30 as seen in FIG. 4. They are simply dropped onto the base, such as a batting, in accordance with the desired pattern, and they are carried on the base until it reaches the sewing needles. If desired, the nubs may be pressed lightly against the fabric base, e.g. by a roller, so that they will not be moved before they are sewed to the base.

The fabric produced thus may have many very ornamental patterns, using the extremely economical warp knitting equipment. Unlike woven and knitted fabrics, those produced by warp knitting through a fabric base can be decorated only in limited ways. While they may be printed, they are not capable of designs such as brocades, damask, etc. The present invention provides a fabric construction capable of designs of that character by a process other than printing and thus expands the possible uses of such fabrics.

It will be appreciated that various changes may be made in details of construction and mode of operation without departing from the scope of the invention. Thus, while specific types of fibers and base materials have been mentioned, they are only examples and others may be used.

We claim:

1. An ornamental fabric comprising a fabric base, a plurality of chains of loops of sewing thread along one side of said base, the sewing threads connecting between loops extending through said fabric base and along its other side, and an ornamental pattern comprising nubs against a side of said fabric base secured to said side by said thread.

2. An ornamental fabric as set forth in claim 1 in which the nubs are against said other side of said fabric and beneath said sewing thread connecting between loops.

3. An ornamental fabric as set forth in claim 1 in which said fabric base is a batting.

4. An ornamental fabric as set forth in claim 1 in which said nubs are of different color from said fabric base.

5. An ornamental fabric as set forth in claim 1 in which substantially each of said chains of loops contain alternate loops formed of two different Sewing threads and substantially each sewing thread forms loops in two adjacent chains, said threads between loops zig-zagging between adjacent stitches on said other side of said fabric base.

6. An ornamental fabric as set forth in claim 1 in which said fabric base comprises undyed fibers and said nubs comprise other undyed fibers having different dye afiinity from the fibers in the fabric base permitting production of colored patterns by cross dyeing.

References Cited UNITED STATES PATENTS 3,274,806 9/1966 Duhl 66-192 3,279,221 10/1966 Glicksmann 66-l92 3,392,078 7/1968 Duhl 66--192 XR RONALD FELDBAUM, Primary Examiner US. Cl. X.R. 

